An interesting look at the creative process and how technology might one day enhance it.

There are two primary types of cognitive enhancement — enhancement of intelligence and enhancement of creative faculties. Even though creativity is often considered a quasi-mystical process, it may surprise some that we are actually closer to enhancing this aspect of cognition than pure intelligence.

There appear to be three main neurophysiological ingredients that influence the creative process These are 1) relatively low levels of cortical arousal; 2) a relatively flat associative gradient; 3) a judicious amount of noise in the cognitive system. [Editor’s note: A person with a high associative gradient is able to make a few common associations with a stimulus word such as “flight,” whereas those with a flat gradient are able to make many associations with the stimulus word. Creative people have been found to have fairly flat gradients, and uncreative people have much steeper gradients.]

All three ingredients conspire to encourage the conditions whereby cognition runs outside of its normal attractors, and produces new and potentially valuable insights.

Read The Full Article Here (via H+ Magazine)

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